Reluctant recyclers will slip back into bad habits

In 1950, Dick Scudder was working at the Newark Evening News when he was approached by a man who claimed to have invented a process to remove the ink from newspapers, making the paper recyclable.

That original process destroyed too much of the paper, but Scudder kept working on it, first out of his kitchen and later at Syracuse University and the Herty Laboratory in Savannah, Georgia.

By 1961 he was ready to put the process into commercial use, opening the Garden State Paper Company. I got to meet Scudder years later when he was a partner with Dean Singleton in the Media News Group, which owned the Sun-News when I came to work here in 2002.

I mention this today to make the point that the technology to recycle newspapers has been in place for more than 50 years. And yet, we may soon all be throwing our newspapers in the trash again.

And our cereal boxes, hard plastics and a whole lot of other things.

Years ago, I was what you might call a slow learner when it came to recycling. Long after others had started putting out separate containers for cans, paper and plastics, I was still tossing everything in the trash.

But, I’m not immune to social pressure. Over the years, I changed my habits. Now, some three decades later, I’ve become so well trained that it pains me to throw a newspaper in the trash. I have to think twice before just automatically tossing small boxes into the recycling bin, now that they are no longer wanted.

When the city first introduced the idea of mandatory curbside recycling in 2006, it was met with an overwhelmingly negative response. A survey taken during six neighborhood meetings resulted in 582 residents against the proposal, only 81 in support.

“It would be hard on a lot of us who are on fixed incomes,” said Deborah Sanchez, a retired medical assistant. “Even if it was discounted, it would still be hard on me. The only way I could support it was if the city could do it for free.”

But the city didn’t give up. In 2007 they formed a new task force to revive the issue. And, by September 2010, every resident in the city was required to pay for recycling services.

Now, it seems likely that the cost for those services will go up, while the level of service will go down. We’re told to blame China. I’m not sure how this ends. But I suspect the trade war with China started last week by President Trump won’t help the situation.

And I fear that those who climbed aboard the recycling bandwagon begrudgingly will easily slip back into old habits.

One final note.

On Wednesday, I will participate in a panel discussion for Sunshine Week, regarding the bill passed by the Legislature this year giving Spaceport America limited protections from open records law. We will have Sen. William Burt, the bill’s sponsor, as well as Spaceport CEO Dan Hicks on one side; Tom Johnson of the Foundation for Open Government on the other. I expect I’ll be somewhere in the middle, along with Sen. Jeff Steinborn, who is also on the panel.

The event will be 5:30 p.m. on the third floor of Zuhl Library. There will be ample time for public comments and discussion on both the open records bill and other aspects of the spaceport.

Walter Rubel is editorial page editor of the Sun-News. He can be reached at wrubel@lcsun-news.com or follow @WalterRubel on Twitter.